A Future That Isn't Here
by Jehilew
Summary: "He hiccups, his heart feeling like it's about to crash out of his ribs, and pulls off the thin shirt sweat-plastered to his body, and stares, head rushing. A soulmark. It means he's got a soulmate."
1. Chapter 1

**Here's my spin on the soulmates/soulmarks trope. If you're new to the concept, the idea is that a person learns they have a soulmate when a soulmark appears- for the older one, when the mate is born, and for the younger, it happens at birth. The mark is the first words they say to each other, marked in each other's script. This part varies from fic to fic, but usually the marks are gold if the mate is alive and silver as they're dead. In this fic, the mark is permanently backlit with a mutant's signature color when powers manifest.**

 **I wrote this a few months ago but still didn't have an idea of how I wanted to lay it out, and tonight, I basically just decided what the hell, and it's going live. The chapters will probably be short, but I have intentions of hitting high (and low) moments of these two finding their way to each other to current 616 happenings. This will be largely canon compliant, but I'm ad-libbing a lot where the comics left holes:)**

 **Anyway, I do hope you enjoy, let me know what you think! I appreciate all feedback, even that of the critical variety.**

* * *

It'd happened somewhere in his sixth year. A burning, stinging rip, starting at the center of his scrawny little chest, zipping out just under his left nipple, and coming back under that line to finish out in a second.

It wakes him up with a yelp he immediately tamps down into a hiss, hellish eyes darting around his space in hopes that he hadn't awakened anyone else that might be out and about. He enjoys some degree of protection on the streets as one of Fagan's kids, but it's a dicey thing at best, and in his experience, it's better if you don't have to rely on that in the first place.

Satisfied at seeing no immediate threats, he dashes a filthy hand over eyes watered up from the pain, and sniffles, glaring ferociously at the very _notion_ of crying. Crying is bad, noisy business. He'd learned long ago to rein that in, back even before going to Fagan, when he'd lived with the Antiquary. It'd been a different sort of threat he'd faced back then, but still, it'd begun a point that life on the streets had driven home: crying over anything always leads to some bit of unpleasantness or another. Better to chin up, and either run from it and hide, or square off and scrap it out.

He drops his hand over his chest, the burn and sting fading, but still present. He feels a momentary panic that he's actually _hurt_ , that there's blood, that he might have to tell Fagan…

He hiccups, his heart feeling like it's about to crash out of his ribs, and pulls off the thin shirt sweat-plastered to his body, and stares, head rushing.

Two swollen, red welts of what looks like letters he sees on signs and the like, in a scurried chicken-scratch across the left side of his chest. He has no clue what it says, never could figure out what all those letters stood for, but he does know what it is. He's seen them on others, most some shade of gold, and others a faded, pale silver, like Fagan's scrawled along the inside of his wrist. He's heard people talk about theirs, and what they mean.

 _A soulmark_.

It means he's got a _soulmate_.

He's not sure what that is, exactly, just that there's a person out there with a matching mark (or something? He'd never quite grasped that part, just that it has to do with what you have to say?), and they're supposed to get married and then they get a new family. Both of which sound pretty good to him. He knows getting married means having a party with a lot of tasty food (the church up the way has a lady who always lets him and others have leftovers, so he knows _all_ about that), and getting a new family…

Well, he's always wanted one of those. Imagined having one while trying to fall asleep on a rough night. Clung to the thought of getting one someday during particularly bad moments, when he'd needed something just to get through something else.

A hopeful smile tugs on his too-thin face as he traces a grubby finger over the still tender lines. _Someday_ …?

He puts his shirt back on, despite the sticky heat of a New Orleans summer night, quickly covering up his mark. Not only is it generally a bad plan to run his streets without clothes, but this…

He can't let this show. He knows not everyone has one, and sparking jealousy or resentment isn't a good idea. He surely can't let Fagan see it. He'd learned the hard way that Fagan drinks hard over the slightest reminder of his own mark. And when he drinks, he's _mean_.

He slips back in his hidey-hole, flattening out on his back with a hand under his head, the other over his mark, and turns his face to the sliver of night sky visible from his perch.

He's got a soulmate.

A future that isn't… _here_.

He grins wider than he has in a long time, eyes on the stars, and rubs his fingers over the knots and loops forming words he's _absolutely_ going to learn to read one day.

 _He's_ _got_ _a_ _soulmate_.


	2. Chapter 2

**So this wrote up fast! And there's a couple of headcanons buried in here— one being that Raven and Irene really _are_ her mothers (using the original idea Marvel had for Kurt's parentage), the other being that Raven actually 'named' the girl, simply because she's always liked the name. And please imagine if it was canon: Raven would completely disregard 'Anna-Marie' and 'Rogue' for "Lena, dear...", and it would send Rogue into a crazy-eyed rabid snit every single time. Tell me that wouldn't be just a tad humorous.  
**

 **Anyway, as always, enjoy, and do let me know what you think!**

* * *

She'd happened just over an hour ago, a tiny, squalling thing, so red, she was nearly purple, bald as day is long, and twice as hungry.

Raven gently shifts the fussy newborn from her shoulder to her breast, making subtle body shifts to regulate her chemistry to that of a brand new mother with milk, and lets her daughter root around til she latches on for another nursing.

 _Lena_. That's what she's calling her in her head, anyway. Not that it matters, they won't be keeping her. Raven has no place in her life for a baby, nor does she feel compelled to make room for one.

She glances over at Irene hard at sleep in the bed, her weaker frame worn out from sixteen hours of back labor. _She_ will feel different about keeping the baby; Irene wants her. Raven does, too, else she wouldn't have assumed certain parts of male anatomy to make it happen, but she has absolutely no desire to raise the child. The girl will be much more interesting after her power manifests.

And manifest, it will, and what a spectacular mutation it will be! Raven has seen the books, she has seen the girl coming back to them, has seen the potential. She and Irene, together with their daughter. A shapeshift, a precog, and a leech. They'll be a hell of a front to best!

Of course, nothing is guaranteed, not even in Irene's books, and there's to lot of those diaries she hasn't even seen.

 _Yet_.

She glances down at the infant drifting to sleep, her latch slack, and milk dribbling out the corner of her mouth. She wonders if Irene had foreseen how it was going to happen, Raven giving her up. Irene doesn't see everything, and Raven had nearly driven herself batshit in figuring out there isn't a real rhyme or reason to what she _does_ see- sometimes it's something of utmost importance, other times, it's something so remarkably insignificant as to be laughable. And then there's the part where Irene withholds things she's seen.

Raven feels an old surge of resentment flare at that, and slides narrowed, yellow eyes at her sleeping lover. A reasonable part of her completely understands why Irene holds out on her. Obvious fucking-with-time-consequences reasons aside, Raven understands that Irene has never been what one called an open individual. Irene has always held her cards to her chest and kept her face straight. She supposes that comes with the territory of knowing too much and feeling responsible with maintaining the known over the unknowns. It still chaps that she could do _so much_ if only she had all the information! So many more circumstances tilted in her favor...

Mostly, it burns her raw that Irene doesn't trust her with the diaries. Doesn't trust that she wants to maneuver things for the better. Better for them. Better for her sons, too, in spite of the moronic paths both idiots have taken.

Better for her daughter, too.

Lena begins to fret again, irritably kicking out her leg and fussing. Raven traces an indigo thumbtip across Lena's brows, down her nose, over and over, humming an old German lullaby in attempt to soothe the baby. _Special_ , is this one—

Lena suddenly stiffens, then squirms into full-fledged screams, furiously kicking her legs, her whole body shaking. The blanket falls to the floor, and Raven hisses at her daughter's exposed thigh. There, that bit of pinked, irritated skin, barely peeking out of her diaper...

No. _No._ no, no, no, _nonono_...

Raven yanks up the gusset, and growls out rapid-fire curses in every language she knows at the unmistakably flirtatious words welting up gold on Lena's skin.

A _soulmark_.

Her daughter has a goddamn _soulmate_.

She flings Irene a look, and flattens her mouth. She'd already lost one soulmate and had been about to kill the other when _her_ words had burned along the line of a rib, and she feels the same rip of annoyance now as she had then. Soulmates get in the way, and she always outlives them anyway, so what was the fucking point?

Horribly inconvenient loves of your life at their very best, and absolute utter heartbreaks, at their worst. Of all her offspring to be saddled with a soulmate, it seems especially cruel for this little one.

"No matter," she murmurs to the child in a low pitch, standing to shush and bounce the tiny girl back to sleep. "Whoever he might be, this soulmate will not stop you. Will not _hurt_ you."

And he won't. She'll see to it personally, at whatever cost.


End file.
